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Abstract

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ran highly controversial campaigns in the 2016 Presidential Election, which then leaves us with the question of what impact is this having on the current economy? Prior analysis of political influence on the stock market tells us that isolating political impact on the stock market is nearly impossible. However, there are clearly defined 4-year cycles in stock prices that seem to correspond with election years. In this paper, I create my own index of stocks in the four major U.S. industries and measure both day-to-day and intraday volatility in stock prices across three comparable time periods: the year leading up to the 2016 election, all election years excluding the 2016, and all non-election years. I found that the 2016 election year was significantly less volatile than both prior election years as well as non-election years, suggesting that the 2015-2016 election year was not a closely contested race.